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Only three species of warblers appeared during the month: the pine-creeping warblers, already spoken of, who were trilling on the 14th; the yellow-rumped, who came on the 23d; and the yellow red-polls, who followed the next morning. The black-throated greens were mysteriously tardy, and the black-and-white creepers waited for May-day. A single brown thrush was leading the chorus on the 29th.
I also noted the Canada warbler, the chestnut-sided warbler, and the black-throated blue-back, the latter most abundant of all. Up these mountain brooks, too, goes the belted kingfisher, swooping around through the woods when he spies the fisherman, then wheeling into the open space of the stream and literally making a "blue streak" down under the branches.
After the grim days of the salient, when he worked with relics from fortresses and anything that could be improvised against the German artillery, came the latest word in black-throated, fiery-tongued monsters from England where the new gunners had learned their ABC's and he and his assistants were to teach them solid geometry and calculus and give them a toilsome experience, which was still more useful.
The song was in the tone of one of the most bewitching as well as the most elusive of warblers, the black-throated green; a bird not so big as one's thumb, with a provoking fondness for the tops of the tallest trees, where foliage is thickest, and for keeping in constant motion, flitting from twig to twig, and from tree to tree, throwing out as he goes
The strain opens with smooth, sweet notes almost exactly like the introductory syllables of the vesper sparrow. Then the tone changes, and the remainder of the song is in something like the pleasingly hoarse voice of a prairie warbler, or a black-throated green.
Perhaps, after the lapse of ten thousand years, more or less, the whole tribe of black-throated greens will have adopted it; and then, when some ornithologist chances to fall in with an old-fashioned specimen who still clings to the plain song as we now commonly hear it, he will fancy that to be the very latest modern improvement, and proceed forthwith to enlighten the scientific world with a description of the novelty.
Black-throated jays go about in flocks. This is a characteristic of a great many Himalayan birds. Probably the majority of the common birds of these mountains lead a sociable existence, like that of the "seven sisters" of the plains.
His whole name is or was till lately black-throated blue-backed warbler, or Dendroica coerulescens, and that being fairly set down for future reference for whom it may concern, I shall call him henceforth, as we did in the woods, the blue. For a day or two at first he was to us, like many another of his size, only a "wandering voice."
The glories of our May bird life are the wood warblers, and innumerable they must seem to one who is just beginning his studies; indeed, there are over seventy species that find their way into the United States. Many are named from the distribution of colour upon their plumage the blue-winged yellow, the black-throated blue, chestnut-sided, bay-breasted, and black poll.
They waded knee-deep in lush grass of a meadow into which Howard had brought water from the hills; among the grass were strange flowers, red and yellow and blue, rising on tall stalks to lift their heads to the golden sun. From the grass rose birds, startled by their approach, one whirring away voicelessly from a hidden nest, another, a yellow and black-throated lark, singing joyously.
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